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This chapter discusses forerunners of the Cosmists and their ideas, including: Vasily Karazin’s proposals for weather control; Alexander Radischev’s sense of man’s continuing evolution; the merger of art and science in the poetry of Mikhail Lomonosov and the sense of cosmic awe in the poetry of Gavrila Derzhavin; Prince Vladimir Odoevsky’s futuristic utopia in which Russia and China are dominant civilizations; and Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s eccentric speculations on human evolution toward smaller, lighter bodies, and eventually toward bodiless existence. Each of these thinkers anticipated...

This chapter discusses forerunners of the Cosmists and their ideas, including: Vasily Karazin’s proposals for weather control; Alexander Radischev’s sense of man’s continuing evolution; the merger of art and science in the poetry of Mikhail Lomonosov and the sense of cosmic awe in the poetry of Gavrila Derzhavin; Prince Vladimir Odoevsky’s futuristic utopia in which Russia and China are dominant civilizations; and Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s eccentric speculations on human evolution toward smaller, lighter bodies, and eventually toward bodiless existence. Each of these thinkers anticipated ideas later developed more fully by Fedorov and the Cosmists, but none goes far enough to be considered more than a forerunner.